Politics

Who shot Ashli Babbitt, the pro-Trump Air Force veteran who was killed by police during the January 6 riot at the US Capitol building? The American people were told that it was a Capitol Police officer who fired the fatal shot. But Cockburn has stumbled across some information that points to a different explanation. Sources close to and within the intelligence community tell Cockburn that Babbitt was actually shot by a member of then-vice president Mike Pence's protective detail. The VP's detail, of course, is provided by US Secret Service, not the Capitol Police. One person asserted to Cockburn over drinks in DC that this is 'basically an open secret' in the intelligence community.

Joe Biden has released a new statement on gun control and it’s about as concise and coherent as you would expect. Here’s an excerpt per a White House transcript: ‘Those who say the blood of lib- — “the blood of patriots,” you know, and all the stuff about how we’re going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been — if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.’ There’s the silver-tongued devil we all know and love.

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to over 22 years in prison by Judge Peter Cahill on Friday for the murder of George Floyd. Prosecutors had asked the imposing punishment be closer to 30 years. State guidelines recommend a 12-and-a-half-year sentence for a first-time offender. Cahill went beyond the guidelines, citing Chauvin’s ‘abuse of a position of trust and authority and also the particular cruelty’ to Floyd. A 22-year sentence tends to be associated with more grizzly offenders. Last year, 17-year-old Jered Ohsman was sentenced as an adult by a Hennepin County District Court — the same court that sentenced Chauvin — for killing 39-year-old Steven Markey during a botched robbery.

We did it, Joe! After weeks of pressure, Vice President Kamala Harris is finally going to visit the US-Mexico border. The administration's border czar will travel to El Paso, Texas, on Friday. 'Earlier this year, the President asked the Vice President to oversee our diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras,' VP spokeswoman Symone Sanders said in a statement Wednesday. 'As a part of this ongoing work, the Vice President traveled to Guatemala and Mexico earlier this month and will travel to El Paso on Friday.' Harris long resisted taking the trip down south, but her position became increasingly untenable with each disastrous interview and skyrocketing numbers of illegal border crossers.

J.D. Vance is the man Republicans have been praying for since the day Donald Trump stormed to the party’s presidential nomination five years ago. He has a lot of the traits conservatives liked about Trump: Vance, too, is a political outsider with proven appeal to an audience beyond politics, thanks to his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Like Trump, Vance offers himself as an avatar for the people who have been discarded by globalization and demonized by a left-wing media and education establishment. And he is as radical as Trump — maybe more so — in his willingness to reject the merely liberal side of American conservatism. Trump defied elite orthodoxy on trade and immigration. Vance adds proposals to curb the tech companies and tax Ivy League endowments. But if J.D.

Score one for unexpected nominative determinism! All this time, people figured Sheldon Whitehouse’s name must foretell a quixotic attempt at the presidency. Instead, it turns out he just likes sitting in a giant house full of white people. Last Friday, as part of the nation’s Juneteenth ebullience (at least eight dead so far!), some enterprising reporter decided to ask the Rhode Island senator about his membership in the Spouting Rock Beach Association, better known as the Bailey’s Beach club. Whitehouse was asked if the club was still all-white — and if he was still a member. Whitehouse was apparently unprepared for the question, which is fairly inexcusable for a politician who has spent a year seeing others consumed by America’s racial 'reckoning’.

A clip showing a New York City Council candidate gagged and in nipple clamps as a dominatrix poured hot wax on him caused an uproar Saturday. But details surrounding the video's release raise questions that could implicate the alleged victim. The Spectator has discovered the full-length footage of the candidate's BDSM session posted on an anonymous, now suspended, OnlyFans account. In the footage, Weiner, 26, is subjected to various forms of humiliation by a dominatrix in leather chaps, who is his ex-girlfriend. The 30-second scene was posted on Twitter last week by an account named '@smart_mistress', the tweet reading, 'My magnificent domme friend played with Upper West Side city council candidate Zack Weiner, and I'm the only one who has the footage.